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Tag Archives: metal type

This wonderful font synopsis presents one of the earliest instances of the Thai script in printing type. Unfortunately there’s no accompanying information with the sheet, but Fiona Ross suggests it dates to between 1836 (when Vincent Figgins died and his business passed to his sons Vincent and James) and the 1880s (the latest date of type specimens under the name of V&J Figgins). Continue reading &rtrif;

In Europe, the various strands of typography came together over centuries. Even before the arrival of printing, there were many styles (and sub-styles) of writing: the Greek and Roman inscriptional capitals and everyday ‘rustic’ letters, the Carolingian and insular uncials, and the textura and rotunda gothics to name only a few key elements. Printing types started in the fifteenth century by mimicking the forms of handwritten letters, and thenceforth, developments in type included bicameralism (including upper- and lowercase versions of letters in one typeface), the integration of uprights with italics, and the gradual movement away from humanist models to the elegant swelling lines of the “modern’ types. Later we see the introduction of sans-serif faces, and the invention of the fat, poster faces that gave us our bolds. Continue reading &rtrif;